Stockholm and proud!

So it was back to Europe and back for my seventh visit overall (second on this trip!) to what is still very much my favourite place in the world, Stockholm, for Pride week, which I'd first sampled last year. Yes, it lasts a whole week, with cultural and political events and entertainments all over the city, and four days at the Pride Park. One of the things I most love about it is that it's clearly something in which a large proportion of the whole city's population participates to a greater or lesser extent - my straight male friend in Stockholm has told me it's around one-third of the city. Touchingly, every bus in the city flies rainbow flags at the front all week. 

At the Pride Parade

As far as I've ever been able to tell, homophobia doesn't really exist all that much in Sweden's big cities; straight men seem by and large to construct their sense of masculinity a bit differently to what we expect in the Anglo-Saxon world, so that they're just not threatened by gay men in the way that still isn't uncommon to a greater or lesser (often unspoken) extent even in English cities. Officially gay venues in Stockholm are actually fairly few and far between; there are however a number of mixed 'gay-straight' venues, and I've been told more than once (albeit judgments do seem to vary a bit on this) that in most non-gay venues, it's pretty safe for a gay guy to try coming on to any guy he likes the look of - because if he isn't gay, he'll most likely just quietly let you know and won't be bothered by it at all. If you've paid for a Pride Park ticket for the whole week, you have to keep on all week the distinctive orange wristband they give you. When last year I joked to my straight male friend that my contingent maybe found it just a little uncomfortable to wander round the city all week wearing a garish marker that we're gay, he genuinely didn't seem to understand what I meant - because of (a) the number of straight people that buy tickets too, and (b) the sheer unlikeliness of any homophobia taking place anywhere.

Once again in Stockholm I was able to hook up with fellow schlager fans from London (Joe, Rob, Dushyan and Leyton... and of course Karl who lives here now) - see my March postings from Stockholm for more explanation of the whole schlager thing if you need it. For those who know Leyton, going out partying with him while on holiday is quite an education, hehe (love you chicken!)...

On the Wednesday night, we went to a club called Ambassadeurs which really fitted the stereotype of a gorgeous (and eye-wateringly expensive... 180 SEK [£16] admission anyone?) club full of gorgeous people. If the stereotypical Scandinavian look is even slightly your type (and as I made very clear in my March postings, it is totally my type), whether you like boys or girls, you like me would have been looking around constantly in a dazed state, trying not to actually drool too much. Really, it was quite incredible. In fairness, none of the Stockholm clubs I'm more familiar with (i.e. Paradise/Kolingsborg, Zipper, Patricia) are really like that - i.e. they certainly have more than their fair share of attractive people but overall the crowd feels more normal - making me conclude that a swanky place like Ambassadeurs must be self-selecting. If you're not in the league of the gorgeous people who frequent it, you're going to feel pretty intimidated and down on yourself quite quickly, and probably hence go somewhere else instead. One thing I really did notice however this time in Stockholm is that while blueish eyes are very common amongst Swedes, naturally blond hair is not as common as the stereotype goes - a lot of gay boys (as well as women) are blond only with the help of a bottle. There also seems to be a slightly peculiar hairstyle (to my eyes) very much in fashion amongst Stockholm gay boys at the moment, involving very short cropped back and sides (probably a number 1) but with quite longish hair on top.

Anyway, I digress. The show at Ambassadeurs that night was Miss Transsexual Sweden which overall was surprisingly entertaining and good fun, with a generally high standard of participants warmly received by the packed crowd. The interval act was a certain Eric Saade. Eric is now a major star in Sweden, yet we'd rocked up at the last minute and managed without any trouble whatsoever to watch his performance all of about 4 feet away from the stage - and this is after I'd met him and got a photo, an autograph and a friendly chat with him (and several other stars) in March. I love the fact that Swedish popstars just seem to be far more accessible, open and down-to-earth, and not at all up themselves about their celebrity status, compared to British and American stars.

Mr Eric Saade, up close at Ambassadeurs :)

The main draw for me and my friends at the Pride Park was the Thursday night which is devoted to schlager, and you can rely on a number of big-name acts appearing. This year's selection (for those who are interested) included Shirley Clamp, Nanne Grönvall, Christer Sjögren, Blond (Melodifestivalen winners in 1997 with the fabulous "Bara hon älskar mig"), Jill Johnson, and Björn Skifs in the opening "classic" section; then in the "contemporary" section after the interval, Elin Lanto, Sofia (yawn), Chiara (an unannounced surprise... wearing an enormous dress with rainbow stripes... they say that vertical stripes are slimming but I couldn't say she looked thin!), Sibel, Jenny Silver (no less peculiar than ever and still wearing that glove), Neo, Hanna Lindblad, Linda Pritchard, Didrik Solli-Tangen, Anna Bergendahl (mutter mutter... I still don't rate her, but she got a rapturous reception), Hera Björk (yay!), and as a final big surprise, Lena Meyer-Landrut, the winner for Germany of Eurovision 2010, who I was particularly delighted to see as I felt it had been a very deserving Eurovision winner. We all had a fantastic time as you might expect. There had been a serious amount of rain on Wednesday night into Thursday, which had turned the Pride Park into a bit of a quagmire. I observed to my posse during schlager night that it was just like being at Glastonbury, but I swear it wasn't me that added, "Yes, but with much better music!" The night was topped off with the packed-out "World's Biggest Schlager After-Party" till 4am in an, erm, museum next to the Pride Park - actually a great venue except that they need to sort out better ventilation - with live PAs by Sarah Dawn Finer and the particularly fabulous Linda Bengtzing.

A little damp but very happy during schlager night at the Pride Park

Other acts at the Pride Park on other nights included Hazell Dean (a bit of an old favourite of mine - she's looking very good for her age if I can say that respectfully, and she's still good at what she does, even if there was clearly limited interest from the sparse Swedish crowd), Emilia, Jessica Folcker, Rednex (whose set seemed to last about three hours... YAWN), Sash!, the Vengaboys (YAY! I still can't believe their comeback single is actually called "A Rocket to Uranus"), Darin, Rebound, Therese, Love Generation and Le Kid. Overall pretty stellar for any Europop fan, so we all enjoyed ourselves a lot.

We were out clubbing till stupidly late every night - that's what we do in Stockholm. In Scandinavia in July, that means that you're walking home in broad daylight. I've always loved this, but it does mess up my body clock something chronic - it's difficult to say the least to get to sleep straight after an eyeful of daylight at 4am or 5am. But then, in Stockholm in Pride week in the summer with schlager on top, I don't really need as much sleep as all that to keep going and energised. Oh and by the way, after my bitching in March about Swedish boys, I'd like to put it on the record that I now know there is at least one attractive Swedish gay boy who is incredibly sweet. :-)

If it seems a bit peculiar to the uninitiated that I'm talking about my favourite city in the world and I'm only talking about clubbing and ridiculous music, well I have done pretty much all of Stockholm's sightseeing in my previous six visits. But every time I go, I do still try to get myself to:

• Riddarholmen, possibly my favourite spot in the world to sit and contemplate - it's a tiny island with a massive church and government buildings but no permanent population, but a truly heart-tuggingly stunning view across the water;
• Monteliusvägen, the highest spot in the city on Södermalm, offering fantastic views back over the water across Gamla Stan, Norrmalm and Kungsholmen;
• Gamla Stan, the wonderful medieval old city, the largest preserved one in Europe, complete with narrow streets it's great to let yourself get lost in; and
• the waterfront in the heart of the city all around the Kungsträdgården area - this is where I first really fell in love with the city on my first visit, and that passion hasn't gone away.

Oh, and as I was travelling on from Stockholm to Finland by ferry, I also got another look at the start of the ferry sailing at the incredible beauty of the Stockholm archipelago, a collection of some 24,000 small islands covering the 60km to Stockholm's east in the Baltic Sea. Yes I'm running out of superlatives, but sailing through is captivating, wonderful and bewitching.

 Sunset in the Stockholm Archipelago... Not much matches this. 

Those brief written descriptions aren't going to effectively convey a lot of the city's appeal to me - it's hard to explain really. Do try to look at some decent photos sometime (I didn't take many this time). The ubiquity of water in the city, which is built across some 14 different islands, has a lot to do with it, especially as it gives a sense of calmness and serenity at various points (such as Riddarholmen) even in the centre. The general beauty of the buildings (albeit there are a few real horrors around as well) also has a lot to do with it, as does the general sense of good organisation... and of style. The Swedes are surely the world leaders in interior design (probably a lot to do with the climate... they're not exactly out of doors a lot in the winter) and right up there in the fashion stakes as well (guess which are my favourite international chains for inexpensive furniture and fashion respectively?!). But I guess that leaves a lot of "je ne sais quoi", and beauty in the eye of the beholder - talking to friends and acquaintances who've also visited Stockholm but aren't schlager freaks, I can tell that they generally think it's nice but are surprised that I'm so passionately insistent it's the number one place in the world. Obviously, I can only plead with everyone reading this to come for a long weekend, try to understand a little of what it is I bang on constantly about, and make up your own minds. I do recommend coming in the summer, preferably within six weeks or so either side of midsummer so that you get the magical effect of the long summer evenings when it barely gets dark at all.

Am I rambling on? Probably, but hopefully that in itself at least conveys a little of how I feel. Anyway, with Stockholm coming straight after the wonderful Canada, you could say that I was feeling pretty good with the world when the time came to move on for the final week of my trip to Finland.

Photos (mainly singers and Pride floats, plus some of the archipelago at the end): http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2393908&id=61207375&l=f8119f351b

The British national pastime...

Only once in my round-the-world journey did I fly British Airways. Only once in my round-the-world journey did I have any significantly unpleasant experience with the airline. Guess which flight it was?

I feel like I now belong to the club that can join in the British national pastime of bitching about British Airways. I had to queue for an hour and a quarter to check in at Montreal Airport because BA only had two check-in staff. And when trying to disembark at Heathrow Terminal 5 (I was just changing planes in London en route to Stockholm), we must have been left waiting on the plane for a good 15 minutes - because the taxiing spot was next to a section of the terminal building that's still being built, and they didn't have enough buses to ferry us to the distant part of the terminal that is actually open. You could say I wasn't impressed...

Parlez-vous anglais?

After more than six weeks in the rest of North America, getting to Quebec and to Montreal was a little bit strange. It just feels very different here to the rest of the continent, both in terms of the cityscape and the people.


Obviously, Quebec is French-speaking, and you'll rarely see a word of English on signage anywhere in Montreal. The Francophone world is of course well known for being very protective of its language. I'm reliably told that in Quebec this is actually reinforced by laws which make it compulsory for shop staff to greet you in French first, and which specify (this does slightly beggar belief) what percentage smaller the text of any English translation on a sign must be than the original French. The recorded announcements on the Metro pronounce every station name French-style, even the substantial number of names that are obviously of English language origin such as "Monk" and "Atwater". (That does distract you a little from how strangely juddery the Metro is, on the trains which all have, er, rubber tyres.)


And start to wander round the old city in Montreal and you'll be almost immediately struck by just how, well, European it is. There are narrow, pedestrianised alleyways with cafe tables outside the pretty period, very un-North American buildings. Not to mention far more people smoking than anywhere else in Canada (apparently Quebec has been dubbed "Canada's smoking section"). To be fair, downtown does feel much more like the other big Canadian cities in terms of architecture and vibe though, although there are far fewer tall skyscrapers.

Which continent?? 

Montreal seems to have a fairly extraordinary number of festivals, which seem to be a fairly defining feature of city life. With the help of my local friends old and new (made through Couchsurfing), I was able to sample three of them. L'International des Feux Loto-Québec is a fireworks festival that runs throughout the summer - actually not just a festival, but an international competition. A fireworks competition was a new concept to me, but seemingly companies which stage fireworks displays are only too keen to compete against each other. They compete as countries, a different one each Saturday night, and it was the turn of Canada when I was there. As I mentioned in my New York musings, I'm no connoisseur of big fireworks displays, but it was breathtaking, not to mention surely hugely expensive (I didn't work out who was paying), with crowds of many thousands watching from various vantage points - seemingly summer Saturday nights out in Montreal often start by watching the fireworks. And how cool is that??

The Piknic Électronique is another weekly happening through the summer. Like the name suggests, it's a giant Sunday afternoon picnic on one of Montreal's rather attractive islands, with music provided by a string of big-name electro DJs, often from Europe. There is a charge to get in, but you're allowed to bring picnic food in with you. There's a lively, very relaxed and friendly and rather cool vibe (and yes for once, when I mention 'music' and 'cool' approvingly in the same sentence I'm not being tongue-in-cheek or deluded) with a range of electro music from the poppy to the fairly hardcore. Slightly disturbingly, the festival had been temporarily shunted from its usual location in favour of a one-off heavy metal festival on the other island which was being given higher billing (what were they thinking of??), but apparently in its usual larger location there's a designated gay area, and as you'd perhaps expect with electronic music there was definitely a polysexual crowd. It was a great thing to experience and I found myself very impressed with a city that can put things like these on every single weekend through the summer.

The third festival was the month-long Juste Pour Rire Festival, apparently the largest street comedy festival in the world. I saw the huge finale evening, featuring more fireworks, children singing songs from The Sound of Music in French ("Doh Ray Me" translated into French sounds more than a little peculiar...), incredible displays by an acrobatic company dangling high in the air suspended by a huge crane, jugglers on stilts, and a 15-foot tall inflatable green monster with red horns, and his pink girlfriend (I'm afraid their names escape me). It was all a bit peculiar at times but once again huge with a crowd to match, fun and deeply impressive. Seriously, this city knows how to enjoy itself.


One daytime I took a trip out to the Olympic Park used for the 1976 summer games, and did the guided tour. Although the park covers a substantial area with lots of grass, the structures are very, er, concrete - if you didn't know when it was all designed and built you'd probably guess right to within about 5 years. Well, I say "all built", but actually due to drawn-out industrial action during preparation for the Games, they didn't manage to complete the roof or tower until... 1987. This is glossed over somewhat in the official tour! The tower is the most impressive feature, being the tallest angled tower in the world. I found seeing the stadium itself a little underwhelming, since there were two major changes which make it somewhat difficult to imagine as an athletics stadium: (a) it now has a permanent, non-retractable roof, and (b) all the seats were removed from one side of the stadium sometime after the Games to accommodate the belated building of the tower. But still, it's the third Olympic stadium I've seen the inside of (after Helsinki and the old Wembley... Stratford next no doubt) and I can see it becoming a bit of a mission to see more if and when I go to other Olympic host cities. Outside the stadium is a circle of flags honouring all the countries which won gold medals at the Games. Sadly this didn't include Canada (oops... can you just imagine if GB wins nothing in 2012??), but it did include East Germany and the USSR - so there's at least one place in the world where those two flags will continue to fly in perpetuity. It's well known that financially the Montreal Games were a bit of a disaster, with the city only managing to finally pay off its debts in 2006 - better late than never! In trying to plug the financial black hole, someone in the provincial government clearly had a sense of humour, since the main method of raising the revenue was a tax on... tobacco. I found the idea of a sporting event being paid for mostly by smokers quite amusing.

The Olympic Stadium and Tower

The gay scene in Montreal is concentrated on a long (and I mean long) stretch of a single street, Rue Ste-Catherine. The Metro station on this stretch has a rainbow-coloured entrance. That's only the start of the unsubtleness of the area - I think it's the first place I've seen where a number of bathhouses (i.e. gay saunas) are on the main gay strip just dotted around the bars and clubs, and where the signage and pictures on the front of the bathhouses makes extremely clear exactly what they are. Nonetheless the general feel of the area was definitely both lively and friendly. However I was pretty underwhelmed by the club, called Sky, that my host David and his friends took me to on Saturday night, but there are at least three big clubs and word of mouth suggested the others might be better - I got to one of the others, Parking, on the Monday night but it was too empty to make much of a judgment.

My overriding impression of the three major cities in Canada is of cities that have fantastic nature on their doorsteps. I think it's something that I'll now always find a little frustrating about London, the fact that there's very little real nature available in, or anywhere close to, the city. In Montreal there is Mont-Royal, more a hill than a mountain really, but it's a reasonably energetic walk - starting virtually in downtown - up secluded tree-lined paths to get to the top. From the top you get a fairly impressive view over part of the city. Just outside the city, within walking distance from the place of my Couchsurfing host David, are the very attractive Lachine Rapids (Montreal is actually situated on a smallish island) on the St Lawrence River - I could easily have spent at least half a day relaxing in this beautiful, totally secluded area in the hot summer sunshine, and not for the first time I found myself distinctly jealous of city-dwellers who have easy access to such attractive unspoilt nature.

Mont-Royal

Really, I didn't entirely want to leave Canada. That's high praise indeed coming from me considering that I was heading straight from there to Stockholm for Pride week there. I was feeling a strong attachment towards Canada and vowing to myself that I'll be back when resources permit. Lonely Planet says that it's an impossible country to dislike, and I'd have to agree with that. If you've ever been tempted to go, please please do it.

Photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2393841&id=61207375&l=288b820acd

Ottawa

After Toronto, I made a brief one-night stop in Canada's federal capital Ottawa en route to Montreal. Ottawa, like Canberra, is a compromise capital - it was chosen by Queen Victoria largely because it's right on the border between English-speaking Ontario and French-speaking Quebec. However today it's a city of over 800,000 people - bigger than Washington DC and a lot more like a real city too.

It's a bilingual city, where shop staff will greet you "Hello, bonjour" or (slightly amusingly to my ears) "Bonjour, hi". However a French Canadian friend later told me that there is a strong element of keeping up appearances here - the Canadian government is very keen to make its capital look bilingual so this has filtered through into a requirement for tourist-facing jobs, but apparently a lot of the population that tourists won't see barely speak a word of French. There is a substantial French-speaking population, but they mostly don't technically live in Ottawa - if you cross one of the bridges over the river literally 10 or 15 minutes from Downtown, you are into Quebec and the town of Gatineau, which is effectively a suburb of Ottawa (which houses the Museum of Civilisation) but definitely French-speaking.

My accommodation here was unusual to say the least - the Hostelling International premises here are a converted, er, jail, known as the "Jail Hostel". It was a working jail until the early 1970s and reopened as a hostel within a couple of years of the last inmates moving out. My dorm was a cell now housing 6 beds. If that sounds like it might be cramped and uncomfortable, to be honest it is a little bit - lighting, air conditioning and availability of power points all leave a bit to be desired. But for my one-night stay it was a fairly memorable, and bearable, curiosity.

One of the more interesting places I stayed...

My day exploring the city had to start on Parliament Hill. Frankly, one look at the Canadian Parliament building and you're reminded that you're in a former British colony, because the architectural similarities to the Palace of Westminster are considerable - not least the clock tower and the clock face itself. As you might therefore expect it's a pleasant and impressive building, with a very nice large lawn to the front, and with very low-key security you can wander all around the outside of the building which is a nice touch. The contrast with Capitol Hill in the US is quite considerable in terms of architecture and atmosphere. The building is not quite on the overall scale of Westminster (presumably deliberately on the part of the colonial powers?) but it's well worth a lingering look and wander. To the front of the lawn is a fountain marking 100 years of Canada as an united entity, with, er, a flame burning literally in the middle of the water fountain (thanks to very high-powered shots of gas emitted from a pipeline at the surface of the water) - a clever and striking effect I don't think I've ever seen before. With a bit more time in the city I'd probably have taken up the opportunity to go inside the Parliament building for one of the frequent tours.

Parliament Hill

However I was there for the daily 10am changing of the guard, which mostly made me think "how very British"! An extraordinarily large number of soldiers, decked out in red tunics and furry black busbies, march around the (slightly muddy) front lawn to familiar military music from the brass band, and then a lot of them stand around for a long time, occasionally taking peculiar rapid little sidesteps. The whole process was a bit incomprehensible and delightfully absurd, and lasted nearly half an hour, in front of quite a large crowd of tourists.

Ottawa or London??

There are bits and pieces of pleasant enough architecture around the remainder of the city, but the most interesting other man-made structure I found was the Notre-Dame Cathedral, an 1841 structure which catches the eye mainly for its twin spires which are plated with tin and therefore gleam in an unusual and striking way.  

There are numerous national museums in Ottawa; you could spend several days just immersing yourself in them. The one I made time to visit with my single day was the Museum of Civilisation which is a very interesting showcase for the aboriginal population of Canada, complete with information and exhibits relating to the many different peoples that live in various parts of this huge country (including the story of at least one substantial civilisation that tragically died out due to an inability to coexist with European settlers plus vulnerability to deadly European illnesses), huge and rather beautiful wood carvings, and audio examples of the charming folk stories that have been passed down by oral tradition among peoples who've never used writing. Very educative and occasionally moving, and well worth a visit for sure.

At the Museum of Civilisation

In Ottawa I had my first encounter with poutine, which is a staple fast food in Quebec and further afield in Canada. It's simply chips (oh sorry, "French fries") topped with cheese curd and covered with gravy - but it's apparently something that many Canadians abroad get homesick for. Knowing I had to try it at some point, I found an outlet of a rapidly expanding fast-food chain which sells nothing but poutine, with a menu offering various different extra toppings. It's, er, different, a bit messy, and I'm not sure it's something I'd ever start craving however much time I might spend in Canada in future - but it was pretty good.

To be honest, I didn't really manage to take to Ottawa like I have done to Vancouver and Toronto - away from the Parliament Hill area it felt a tad provincial and often not especially attractive, and it was missing that 'je ne sais quoi' vibe for me. I wouldn't advise making this a core stop in a tour round Canada. But if you do have time, especially if you're hungry for some museum action, this might still be a decent place to spend a night or two. For me it was onwards to Montreal.

Photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2393697&id=61207375&l=813df9d3ff

Toronto and Niagara Falls

My last ten days in North America took me back into Canada, on the eastern side this time. And once more I loved it.

Toronto isn't really a conventionally beautiful city, and one of my local friends there told me that it didn't have much of a tourist industry until twenty or thirty years ago. But in my book it was unquestionably a great and supremely comfortable place to walk around, explore and generally hang out.

A significant part of this appeal is because it's a hugely diverse city. In stark contrast to Australia, Canada has long had a diverse population, and the federal government specifically decided around the 1960s that in order to develop and grow it was going to become a "nation of immigrants", attracting people with pretty much open arms to resettle there from all over the world. And it's Toronto, the country's biggest city, which is the biggest hub of this global melangerie, with the second highest proportion of immigrants among all world cities but no one dominant immigrant nationality, and a 911 service offered in 150 languages (really). So you can take it as read that you're not exactly going to want for multicultural eating and shopping options anywhere, or feel out of place whoever you are.

The most famous sight in Toronto is the CN Tower, the world's tallest building for 32 years until something in Dubai (where else?!) overtook it in 2007. It looks much like other monster concrete communications towers you can see in cities such as Berlin, Prague and Stockholm, just taller. And I just wasn't prepared to pay some $23 (£14) just to go up to the observation tower.

 The CN Tower

Fortunately, as I've already mentioned, Toronto is a great city to just walk around without spending a cent. Kensington Market is certainly one of the more interesting markets you'll see anywhere. Stretching over a number of narrow streets, it's lively, multicultural and bohemian, with radical bookshops and pot smoking equipment stores, but also nice independent bakers and the like. Within walking distance is an extensive Little Italy, and slightly further from the centre and thus broadly off the tourist trail (thanks Rishi for taking me there) is the Distillery District where beautiful old warehouses have been converted into bars, restaurants, artisan shops and even a small independent theatre - a really, really nice place to explore and hang out for a while. Queen's Park is a very pleasant large park just on the edge of downtown, featuring the very ornate and moderately grand 1893 sandstone provincial legislature building for Ontario. Downtown from the same period and in a not dissimilar style is the also impressive Old City Hall. This has been superseded by City Hall round the corner, designed by a Finnish architect, an award-winning modernist structure opened in 1965. That might give you a clue as to what to expect, but actually as 1960s statement architecture goes I didn't think it was too bad at all. It's two tallish curved towers together forming roughly a circle shape, with a bit over the central lobby that looks remarkably like a white flying saucer, a large artificial lake outside complete with fountains and benches, and a ramp system to get you around the area and also give you vantage points to admire it all. I reckon 1960s concrete looks a lot better with curves than with brutalist edges and sharp angles, and overall it's definitely characterful and probably quite pleasant, with the artificial lake area seeming to be a popular lunch spot.

City Hall

Like in Vancouver, wandering around Toronto's downtown you know you are in North America because of the number of skyscrapers. But you also know you are not in the USA because they are scattered with plenty of relatively low-rise buildings in-between - and I've already commented, probably more than once, about how much of a difference, a positive and human one, this makes to the feel of the city. The skyscrapers also seem to be gleaming steel-and-glass constructions, often kind of attractive, much more than in the American cities I've seen - possibly testament to Canada's first real economic boom coming many decades after the US's.

Like in Vancouver, once you've had enough of the city, there is a fantastic piece of nature virtually on your doorstep. In Toronto this is Toronto Islands. It's worth going just for the ferry trip, because on the water you get a fantastic view back over downtown Toronto. But when you get to the islands, what you have is a very peaceful and pretty unspoilt collection of parkland and beaches, where you could easily stroll for hours or sunbathe all day (as quite a lot of locals seem to). There are some inhabitants who live in charming wooden bungalow huts, but it's all very tightly controlled by the charitable trust who own them all, so thankfully there's been no over-development. One of the beaches is an officially designated 'clothing optional' beach - my Couchsurfing host Brandon who was showing me round (thanks again!) took me there for a brief look, and slightly disturbingly the people who seem to be keenest on taking their clothes off are often those who should definitely keep them on... Anyway, I was amused to see a city council sign at the edge of the beach declaring "Municipal code #608: Clothing is required beyond this point" - amused mostly by the idea that it's specifically written into the municipal code... Nonsense aside, a ferry trip out is a really fantastic way to spend an afternoon and highly recommended if you come here.

The Toronto skyline from Toronto Island

The truly essential thing though to do while in Ontario is to go to Niagara Falls. It's an easy if not exactly cheap day trip from Toronto. And it's truly stunning. Straddling the border between Canada and the USA, there are two parts to the falls - the "bridal gown" falls which run in a straight line on the US side, and the much more breathtaking "horseshoe" falls, shaped as the name would suggest, on the Canadian side. You don't have to spend any money once there to admire the falls from various angles, and you can linger for as long as you want on the path which runs directly adjacent (surprisingly so) to the horseshoe falls. Over one million bathfuls of water course over the edge every single second, which constantly generates large quantities of mist - you can't wander round without getting quite damp, even on a warm sunny day. But you shouldn't really get too bothered by that, because you'll be too busy going 'wow' at the sheer natural power and beauty in evidence. There are several ways that the park authorities part tourists from more of their cash (in fairness, only to channel it back into the upkeep of the park); I did one of these, the Queen of the Mist, a hardy boat which takes you past the bridal gown falls up close and then heads pretty much into the crescent of the horseshoe falls. You're provided with a poncho as standard to avoid getting soaked by the mist. Unsurprisingly the boat is packed but I found it well worth it to get properly up close to the immense fury of the cascading water.

A still picture cannot possibly convey the awesome power...

Unfortunately, in the close vicinity of the falls are also truly ghastly tourist traps of every description - "tacky" does not come close, but fortunately they're concentrated on a street which runs perpendicular, not parallel, to the falls, so you can safely run away screaming and pretty much forget they're there. So mercifully, you don't need to be put off as you can pretty much concentrate on the nature.

The bus tour to Niagara Falls that I booked also featured a stop at the small town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, a deliberately quaint place full of cute colonial 19th Century buildings with traditional awnings housing hat shops, high-end chocolate and cake makers, hotels serving afternoon tea, and so on. They don't allow coaches or other heavy vehicles through the town, so the largest form of transport to be seen was numerous horse-drawn carriages. It's all a little bit artificial, but worth an hour of anyone's time to see a very creditable attempt to preserve a tiny corner of the 19th Century British Empire in Canada (in a real town of 15,000 inhabitants). The tour then concluded with a brief wine tasting stop (the Niagara area is apparently quite prolific wine country, although I'm not sure how many Europeans ever see evidence of that in their restaurants or off-licences), most interesting for the taste of ice wine which is a bit of a local speciality. Think dessert wine and then think sweeter still, and you're pretty much there. They produce it by allowing the grapes to stay on the vine after all the other grapes have been picked some time in the early autumn, until around January by which time the Canadian winter has frozen them solid. They are then picked in the middle of the night, preferably when the temperature is around -15C, and squeezed immediately. The water in the grapes will be entirely frozen, but the sugar won't be - so they get two or three drops of liquid out of each grape. Unsurprisingly this is a costly process, so ice wine is expensive, but what I tasted would certainly be very pleasant as a dessert wine in very small quantities - the bottles are small and I don't think you'd want to drink a load of it. It was mentioned also that overindulging would give you the mother of all hangovers.

Niagara-on-the-Lake

I didn't do that, but I was pretty under the weather for nearly the whole of my stay in Toronto. First I had a nasty cold virus which took an inordinately long time to clear up. Honking and hooting regularly with a tissue to your nose is not a good look, especially in the summer - but I take this as a sign that my body was run down from the various stresses of budget backpacking on my tight itinerary, such as regular long journeys, sharing a range of dorms with dodgy air conditioning, crashing with friends and Couchsurfers in sharply varying degrees of comfort and privacy, often eating less well than usual, unavailability of gym workouts, and a lack of proper solo quiet time. It's a strange anomaly that at the same time as I've been incredibly mentally relaxed, I've almost certainly got a bit physically stressed. I then had some sort of chronic (thankfully not acute) digestive upset - goodness knows where from this time. Given some of the dodgy food and catering facilities I've used over the past four and a half months, I should probably just be grateful that it was the first time it's happened since India. The net result is that although Toronto has a large gay scene - with a Pride the week before I arrived which attracts the small matter of one million (!) participants annually - alas I can't tell you very much about it except that it's clearly big, visible and confident.

In case you haven't got the idea yet, I really liked Toronto, one of those places I just felt at home, and pretty high up the list (yes yes, it's rather a long list now) of places I hope to get back to.

Photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2393691&id=61207375&l=90bc46830a

Philadelphia

Philadelphia is the murder capital of the USA. Given the frightening enough statistics nationwide for the US, that might be enough to put some people off going there. But actually, it's a surprisingly pleasant place to make a short stop between New York City and Washington DC. I gave myself one day there which was sort of enough (even though it was a not very energetic day at that due to rather brutal summer heat) but it was well worth it. It's not like tourists being touristy are often randomly murdered anywhere, is it?

There are at least two major tourist 'sights' in the city. Coming straight from Washington DC, and with the local tourist literature admitting you can expect long queues, I decided to skip Independence Hall, the site where both the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution were debated and adopted. However the Liberty Bell has no such queues and is easy to drop by. The former bell in the Pennsylvania State House, urban legend says that it was struck to mark the public reading of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The museum devoted to the bell admits that there's no evidence this is true, but never mind eh? Because nonetheless it became a great symbol of American independence and, later, of freedom across the world. Notably it became an icon of the anti-slavery movement in the US, and delegations from newly independent African nations also posed for symbolic photos with the bell. Alas the bell hasn't actually been in service since at least 1846, because of a massive crack which now runs down it rendering it useless. It was apparently beyond the powers of American engineers in this era to design a bell which this wouldn't happen to sooner or later. Since its decommissioning it has done various tours around the US, with literally millions keen to take a look. As a slightly eccentric piece of distinctly American political symbolism, the bell and its museum is a good place to spend half an hour or so.

Liberty Bell

Philadelphia is also a notably pleasant city to just go for a walk, especially if you're based (as I was) in the historic east of the city near the Delaware River, where you genuinely feel history and heritage. It's full of pretty period red-brick townhouses, many of them with ornate wooden shutters at the windows which may reflect the strong Italian influence on the city. South Street is one of the more appealing shopping streets I've seen, and here as elsewhere in the city a strong culture of massive street murals is very much in evidence. Downtown Philadelphia is probably less to write home about, but the City Hall is absolutely enormous, apparently the largest in North America, and festooned with fancy columns and classical carvings. Unfortunately unlike San Francisco City Hall but as so often with New York landmarks, the area all around is too built up for it to be easy to appreciate fully.

Philadelphia's main "culinary" claim to fame (I use the word 'culinary' very loosely) appears to be the Philly cheese steak. Available from street stalls and fast food joints everywhere, it's shavings of grilled beef steak served with melted cheese and optionally onion in a white bun. I sampled one, and while it's probably the biggest nutritional disaster you'll find this side of Glasgow, it kind of hit the spot and it's not hard to see the appeal. I think somebody told me that Philadelphia has the highest obesity rate in the USA, which may not be unrelated...

While I'd frequented a distinctly American cafe in San Francisco, it was when looking for breakfast in Philadelphia that I found one which totally fulfilled the picture I had in my head of a quintessential American cafe. No tables in sight - the only seating it had was stools at the elliptical-shape bar, from the inside of which the waitress took all orders. Having to eat breakfast on a barstool was a bit strange somehow, but a bit of authentic culture to tick off.

Photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2393690&id=61207375&l=974458dec5